Class 15 and 23

[class37418stag]

Hello everyone

 

I believe class 15 and class 23 usually shunting duties at station and goods yard ?

 

Class 15 and class 23 not suitable for express train over suffer the engine and problems to due withdrawal by out of service?

 

Thank you

['CHARD]

Class 15 were trip freight engines.

 

Class 23 were suburban passenger power. Including the Cambridge dining trains.

 

They were early withdrawal candidates due to their work dwindling and their non-standard designs as much as anything. Stratford had worked out how to tease the best from them by 1970 before their withdrawal.

[Baby Deltic]

Just to add to what has already been said, class 15's were also used as pilot engines at stations for shunting stock and moving empty coaching stock to and from carriage sidings. Class 15 number D8234 was often at Liverpool Street on pilot duties, plus a few were used at Kings Cross during their short lives. Aside from the ecs duties, they were also used on the rubbish trains out of London which were a bit smelly to say the least.

 

Baby Deltics were something of a 'pet' class for the Hitchin crews who worked them. They were occasionally used on freight and parcels services, and Engineers' trains. The Palace Gates to Whitemoor coal workings sometimes featured class 23's, usually double headed with another class member or a class 30/31. Baby Deltics sometimes worked double headed with class 15's also.

[31A]

Have seen pictures of 15s on King's Cross suburban passenger workings, and also (in Dr. Ian Allen's book 'Diesels in East Anglia') a picture of D8205 passing Whitlingham Jn. (outside Norwich) with a Midlands-Lowestoft express passenger.  Presumably (but not necessarily) the train reversed in Norwich and the caption notes that it would only have worked the train between Norwich and Lowestoft.